Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 24

"We think it's possible. I want to ask you about the blackmail now. You paid almost fifty thousand dollars, then stopped paying, which looks like it led directly to Jenny's murder two days later, and you never told the police about any of it. And then six or eight months later, Max gets murdered in a faked hit-and-run out in Bakersfield."

Niki said nothing. There was silence in the room for a full minute (Carmen tracked it on the clock on the wall).

"Niki, could I have a word with the lieutenant and her people, please? Uh, Bobbi, could you and Elliott step out, too? Thanks," Calloway said. Sullen, Niki left the conference room, trailed by The Bitch and the Briefcase Carrier, who closed the door behind them. Calloway waited until they were down the hall and couldn't see in the window in the door. Without being asked, Marybeth turned off the video and audio recorders.

"She's a piece of work, isn't she?" Calloway sighed.

"Sure is," Marybeth said.

"So, Marybeth, how've you been? Charlie okay?" Charlie was Marybeth's husband. Lauren had met him exactly once, for less than two minutes.

"He's good, Cal. You know, still teaching physics to college freshmen and starting to think about retirement someday. How's Jo and the kids?"

"They're good. I'll tell Jo you said hi."

"Do that. Last I heard, Cal Junior was a year or two away from finishing medical school, but I don't think he'd picked a specialty."

Cal grinned. "He's in a small group practice. You'll laugh your ass off when I tell you what his specialty is."

"Good-looking kid like him? Let me guess. Gynecology?"

Calloway laughed. "Good try, but a little off. Proctology."

"Good god, no!"

"Yep. And of course now we have a family joke that he entered the family business, just like mine. The Calloway family specializes in making assholes feel better."

Everyone in the room laughed.

Calloway looked at Marybeth. "So. What kind of trouble's my girl in?"

Marybeth sighed. "End of the day, probably nothing. You and I both know I could cobble together some half-assed minor chickenshit, but my heart wouldn't be in it. But I'll tell you this much, Cal. I have spent the past two years really, really pissed at Alice Pieszecki for fucking up my homicide investigation. I'm telling you now for the record I'm equally pissed at Niki. To my mind she's now fifty percent responsible for putting my investigation into the shit can. If she had come forward right away and told us about the blackmail, we'd have never let Pieszecki's false confession sit there and fester. We'd have been all over it, and we may even have turned up the Creep stalker two years ago, instead of last week. And for all I know that might have prevented Max's homicide."

Calloway nodded sympathetically. "I don't blame you. And I can tell, you guys really like the blackmailer for this. Maybe for both."

"We do, Cal. We've got a couple other people we want to look at, but there's no doubt the blackmailer and Creep are the top of our list, and I'm convinced they are the same guy."

"Let me ask you this. How come you and Lauren are even handling it? What I heard was, you took the promotion to head Missing Persons partly because you blew a case and walked away from the homicide squad all pissed at yourself. This was that case, right?"

"I guess that's about as true as most scuttlebutt, Cal."

"They ever give you shit upstairs?"

"You kidding? They were happy as clams we had a confession so fast, and even happier it was somebody who had no connection to Niki and the studio. Upstairs they were patting each other on the back and calling the janitor to come mop up their flop sweat. When I put in for the transfer, they gave me Missing Persons thinking it was a reward for good work. I took it as penance for a job I let get away too easy."

"How'd you re-open it?"

"It fell into my lap. Shane and Carmen, there, came to me and wanted it re-opened. At first I couldn't do it, but I let Lauren start playing with it off the books. Mainly because the goddam thing was still stuck in my craw. Before you know it, Charlie's Angels here started popping up viable leads, and then the second homicide out in Bakersfield. So I sweet-talked Homicide into letting us continue to run with it, since we were so far down the road already. And you know Jack. I could always talk him into anything. How'd you get hooked up with Niki?"

"Jerry Friedlander's shop handled her, back when she sued that skin magazine over the faked blowjob photo, and then her first coke re-hab. Then when Jerry dropped dead from that stroke he had in superior court, he only had two people in his practice who had criminal as well as drug and alcohol rehab experience, but they were busy working something with one of the Kardashians. So they politely told Niki she should look around for other representation, and I was one of the names they gave her. Of course, she's got all the movie contract and endorsement stuff, and Mike Trainor's still got that, the business end of her, but he doesn't handle the criminal and drug-and-alcohol stuff. So anyway, that was just before Schecter was murdered, and Niki didn't have a criminal lawyer."

"You mean when we interrogated her she was up there without a net?"

"Yep. Bare-ass naked, legally speaking. That's one reason she never asked for a lawyer."

"We Mirandized her and asked if she wanted to call one, but she said no. I thought she was crazy, but of course I wasn't going to push it. And then the dumb bitch confesses to stealing the negatives and planting them in Jenny and Shane's house, and I started worrying about her rights and self-incrimination, even though we'd bent over backwards. And then the pussies at the studio shit their panties and declined to press charges, because they wanted to keep their movie and their diva as far out of the limelight as they could. And then a couple hours later Pieszecki confesses, and I just lost it, went home and kicked the dog and made Charlie miserable for a week."

"Yeah, I can see that, especially knowing you. You said earlier that this Pieszecki woman was covering for somebody. Who?"

Shane quietly raised her hand. "That would be me."

Calloway looked at her calmly. "Did you kill Jenny?"

"No."

"Glad to hear it. But why did Pieszecki think so?"

"Because I had motive. I was really pissed at Jenny, more pissed than I think I've ever been at anyone in my whole life."

"My understanding is you and Niki had a sexual relationship, is that correct."

"Why's that important?" Shane asked.

"Only because Niki's my client, and, how can I put this politely? She has difficulties with truth and factual matters. So I like to double check things she's told us, just to make sure. She says you and she had a thing going on, and Jenny kicked you out of the house."

"That's right," Shane said quietly.

"This was while you also had a relationship with Jenny?"

"No. But that's the thing. Jenny and Niki had broken up a few days earlier, and from my point of view Niki was, uh..."

"Fair game?"

"Well, uh, yeah. I wouldn't put it that way, but yes. Fair game."

"Jenny kicked you out of the house, and she kicked Niki out, is that right? Was that her pattern with girlfriends and lovers?"

"No, not at all."

"I hate to ask this next question, but as far as you know was anybody else beside you and Jenny having sex with my client? Anybody from your circle of friends, I mean."

"No."

"Not Alice?"

"Good god, no," Shane said, and Carmen laughed. Marybeth looked away, and Lauren smiled.

"Sorry for asking, but why is that funny? I'm only asking for my education."

Carmen glanced at Shane, but knew she had to take it. "It's only funny if you knew Alice. But the main thing is that Alice was in the middle of a pretty intense break-up with someone she'd been serious about for a year or more. And, uh, how can I put this? Niki wasn't Alice's type."

"Because?"

"Let's just say, Alice is fairly high maintenance herself, and Niki is a couple of orders of magnitude higher. Jenny was, too. Let's just say, not Alice's type."

"Okay. How about Niki and anybody from the studio? What about Adele, the other blackmailer? Any of the other actresses or studio people?"

"I wasn't around, but I never heard anything," Carmen said.

"Nothing as far as I know of," Shane said. "And definitely not Adele."

"Again, may I ask why not?"

Shane searched for words. "Nothing I can put my finger on. Just oil and water, I guess. There was some talk about Niki and her posse and the people she hung out with, but who she might have been fucking -- uh, sorry. Who she might have had relationships with I don't know. I never hung around with them."

"No gossip, no talk around the studio?"

"To tell you the truth, I don't listen to a lot of gossip. People talk, but I don't pay attention and sometimes I just walk away."

"If that's true, you're the only person in all of Southern California who doesn't pay attention to gossip, but I guess there had to be someone, and it turns out to be you. That's good, it restores my faith in humanity." Calloway turned his attention to Carmen. "Miss Morales, you've been pretty quiet. Do you have any thoughts on everything we've discussed that might be useful?"

"Everything seems to be covered pretty well, I'd say."

"My understanding is you were not in Los Angeles when the movie was being made and when Miss Schecter was murdered."

"That's right. I had moved to San Francisco and I work for a cruise line. I was halfway to Hawaii when Jenny was killed."

"And my client says you and she never met, and didn't know each other then or even now, is that correct?"

"Yes, correct."

"My understanding is you also had a sexual relationship with Miss Schecter at one time, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"How long did that relationship last?"

"Maybe six months."

"Was your breakup amicable? No dramatics? No kicking anybody out?"

"It was very amicable, yes, as you said. No dramatics. And we remained good friends, right up to the end. We'd talk on the phone, exchange gossip, send Christmas and birthday presents, visit one another. She came on cruises on my cruise line when I was aboard. I even sent her a video tape saying goodbye to Bette and Tina that Jenny made. They were all watching that video when Jenny was murdered."

Calloway pondered his next question. Carmen wondered if he was going to go any deeper into any of her relationships and history, sexual or otherwise. She wasn't going to let him go very far.

"All right, thank you, Miss Morales," he finally said. "Marybeth, I thinks that's all I have."

Calloway stood up, and Marybeth did, too, meeting him at the conference room door to see him out. They spoke for a second at the doorway.

"I feel like I just walked in on my parents having sex," Lauren whispered to Shane and Carmen.

"Icky," Carmen agreed.

"Fucking-A," Shane said.

Marybeth came back in and sat down. She looked at the three blank faces staring at her. "What?" she said, but knew what was what.

"That was some show you two put on for us," Lauren said.

"Yeah, well, a day in the life of a police lieutenant. Consider it a teachable moment. That was Cal. Most of it was for Niki's benefit. They're going down in the elevator now, and he's telling her how close she came to being arrested and having the book thrown at her, were it not for his terrific lawyerly skills and contacts. Meanwhile Bobbi has already reamed Niki two new assholes for withholding evidence, aiding and abetting, obstruction, driving under the influence of stupid, and whatever else she can cough up that her boss, Calloway, can say he got her off the hook for. And Elliott gets to watch and learn. Like you guys."

"Is that why you let us stay?"

"Yes. And because Cal wanted you to stay, too."

"Why's that? Carmen asked.

"He wanted to hear you and Shane talk. He wanted to get to know you."

"Why?"

"He was being thorough, it's one of the many things he's good at. And you never know. In Hollywood, people's paths cross and re-cross all the time. Maybe someday in the future one of you might become his client. Or a witness in a case or something."

"Or a victim," Shane said quietly. Nobody laughed.

"That reminds me, I want to ask three questions," Carmen said.

"Go," Marybeth said.

"Number one. Why was Max killed? Number two. Jenny was killed two years ago, and Max roughly half a year later. The killer is out there now. What's he doing? Does he know we're after him? Is he watching us?"

"Number three. Are any of us also in danger?"